Friday, September 18, 2015

It is often the
case that when speaking about caste-related problems one is accused of being
casteist.This is also true in Goa,
where any discussion about the realities of caste power evokes accusations of
being motivated by a personal dislike for brahmin groups, or of constantly
“targetting” brahmins, especially—so the argument goes—given that the Saraswats
are but a minority community; so any polemical attack on them amounts to
casteism or communalism.

But it is not casteism
to speak about the violence of unequal power relations engendered by the
presence of the caste system and the identities of caste. Rather, the
conspiracy of silence around unequal power relations and the dominance of a
single group, or a couple of groups, through caste privilege is what
constitutes casteism. There is generally a deep silence about the violence of
caste, and casteism operates when those who seek to speak about this violence,
and challenge it, are accused of being casteist.

Let us be clear
that in Goa, the Saraswats may be a small community, but they are a powerful
community who hold much social, cultural and economic capital, and whether
consciously or unconsciously, they wield power to ensure their continued
hegemony. They fulfill the sociological category of “the dominant caste”
constructed by the famous sociologist M. N. Srinivas. To expose the manner in
which this power is wielded is not, to my eyes casteism.

There are often
suggestions, that “to be proud of one’s origins is not casteism”. Rather,
casteism is when one “belittle[s] the origins of others”. This is an ingenious
strategy beloved of many supporters of the caste system.These proponents of the caste system fail to
recognise that any identity of the self is invariably linked to identities of
others. Thus, one can be brahmin only because others are not. Further, as a
result of the operation of history, the brahmin identity is not an innocent
identity. It is invariably the identity of oppressors. This is more so the case
in Goa, where groups that claim a Saraswat identity, whether Catholic or Hindu,
have controlled property, people tied to those properties, and attempted to
control the rest of society too. There is not the space here to demonstrate fully
how the assertion of a brahmin identity in Goa is invariably at the cost of
demeaning a non-brahmin one, but any honest look at our society and history
will bear this out.

It needs to be
stated clearly, however, that the problem in Goa is not just with brahmins
alone. There are other upper-caste groups, like the Chardos and the Desais, who
despite their limited size similarly exert power owing to the manner in which
they not just control landed property, but enjoy social privilege. Indeed, as
the case of the Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM) will demonstrate, it is possible
for Chardos to operate with the brahmanical matrix that the KBM embodies. As
friend once commented, “for the Chardos, to be anti-brahmin is to be
anti-caste”. What they all too often ignore is that they are a part of the
problem, along with the brahmins.

It is this
limited anti-brahmin agenda, instead of an agenda of anti-brahmanism that has
ensured that the bahujan movement in Goa has missed a historical opportunity to
forge a democratic polity. Instead, they have slipped into Hindu nationalism,
precisely because the brahmanical logic of Indian nationalism have not been
challenged. Take the constitution of the Bharatiya Bhasha Surkasha Manch (BBSM),
which includes not just brahmins like Bhembre, but leaders of the bahujan
castes, like Shashikala Kakodkar and Vishnu Wagh. Once again though, it is
impossible to have Brahmanism, without the body of the brahmin, and it is
precisely through the presence of brahmins in the BBSM that it gathers its
symbolic strength. This is so because historically, it has been dominant caste
groups, and especially brahmins that have set themselves up as arbiters of
style and standard.

The power that
Bhembre, Bhatikar, and other brahmins, Hindu or otherwise, claim to determine
“standard”, whether of Konkani or otherwise, flow from the way in which upper
caste individuals asserted their claim over languages in the late nineteenth
century. In this context I would like to refer attention to the work of Veena
Naregal in Language, Politics, Elites and
the Public Sphere (2001) where she points outthat

“By the later decades of the nineteenth
century, drawing on philological beliefs about the essentially interrelated
genealogy of the Indian vernaculars and their common descent from the
immaculate purity of the great and ancient Sanskrit language, English-educated
individuals in different parts of the subcontinent could claim to constitute a
transregional kinship with an immaculate high' cultural pedigree. An important
part of this elite self-image was their shared status as custodians of
'correct' cultural practices. Thus, when giving the Wilson philological
lectures in 1877, claiming descent from the noble brahmins of the 'ancient
aryavarta' was, for the well-known orientalist scholar Bhandarkar, clearly, a
way of enlarging through their dominance over the regional vernacular spheres”(p.
48).

It has been suggested that Uday Bhembre and Arvind Bhatikar are ‘good’ persons who have
“the highest respect” for the Christian community in Goa. If they do, they have
a very strange way of showing it, given that they have been suggesting Goan
Catholics are anti-national merely for asserting their right to educate their
children in the same English language that Bhembre and Bhatikar’s families are
being educated. One wonders if these good persons have directed similarly
vituperative language at the members of their own families. In any case, the
assertion of the patriarchal right to dictate to other local communities is
very much a part of brahmanical arrogance. An ideal way to show respect for the
Christians in Goa would be for Bhatikar and Bhembre to cease their frightening
hate-speech and support the right of these communities to determine the path of
their own future.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

In his article, “The
Brahmin double: the Brahminical construction of anti-Brahminism and anti-caste
sentiment in the religious cultures of precolonial Maharashtra” ([2012]
2014), Christian Lee Novetzke discusses the cases of the Marathi bhakti poets
Jnaneshwar and Eknath. Novetzke’s argument is that the image of Brahmin
reformers is not as cut and dry as it is made out to be. Rather, he argues that
these reformers were embodiments of what he calls “the brahmin double”. The
brahmin double is the strategy through which a brahmin pokes fun of, or
critiques other brahmins who are cast as bad, evil, or bigoted. In doing so,
the brahmin operating as the good part of the double “provides one important
way to separate Brahminism and Brahmins”. That is, the audience fails to see
that the problem is not with individual brahmins alone, but also with Brahmanism.
By deflecting critique toward individual brahmin figures, and not the system
that produces brahmins and brahmanical structures, the good brahmin ensures
that Brahmanism continues its grip over Indian society. Novetzke points out
that a classic feature of the Brahmin double is that it always offers reform of
Brahmanism, and never radical critique. Thus the Brahmin double ensures that
there are superficial changes, even as the status quo is maintained.

Reading this
argument, it occurred to me that recent Goan history offers great examples of
the “brahmin double” over various generations. A
previous column discussed Varde Valaulikar’s response to Raghunath Talwadkar.
Valaulikar’s proposed that the Saraswat caste embrace the Konkani language as
their mother-tongue while Talwadkar opposed this proposal pointing to the
language’s association with lower classes, and castes, and with “defiled”
Christians such as José Gerson da Cunha. As pointed out in that column, Valaulikar’s
response was not to condemn Talwadkar’s blatant casteism. Rather, he offered
the suggestion that in fact the Catholic missionaries had learned Konkani from
brahmins, and that da Cunha himself was a brahmin. In this equation, Talwadkar
gets castigated as the bad brahmin, and Valaulikar effects the “brahmin double”
move by ensuring that brahmin hegemony is not challenged, but rather paves the
way for the Saraswat caste and associated caste groups to assert their claim
over the Konkani language.

Another argument
that I made in the
earlier column was to point to the fact that Valaulikar’s project was
carried forward by men like Uday Bhembre. To this extent, Uday Bhembre, and his
associates, are contemporary embodiments of Valaulikar. Bhembre was a hero of
the Konkani language agitation, a legend of his time. He was lionized as the
man who went into the meetings of pro-Marathi activists and shouted out loud
that Konkani, not Marathi was his mother tongue, at certain risk to his bodily
integrity. The more important legend for my argument is his response when asked
by pro-Marathi activists; “How can you claim Konkani as your mother tongue when
your father claims Marathi as his mother tongue?” Bhembre’s famous response was
“But don’t you know that my mother and my father’s mother are not the same
person?” In the course of the Konkani language agitation, Bhembre was playing
the Brahmin double, and his father, Laxmikant Bhembre, and other brahmins, were
cast as the bad brahmins, who could not see that Konkani was the mother tongue
of Goa. Through his actions Bhembre junior ensured that he deflected attention
away from the fact that the Konkani that he and his companions were pushing was
in fact not a Konkani of the bahujan masses, but the Antruzi dialect and the
Nagri script, both associated with Valaulikar’s project of brahmin hegemony in
Goa.

Today, with the
kind of association that Bhembre is making with the RSS against the demands for
the recognition of English as a state supported medium of instruction, you have
younger Saraswat men who are effecting the strategy of the Brahmin double.
Responding with horror to Bhembre’s suggestion, they point out that there
are more Hindus than Catholics studying in diocesan schools that have switched
from Konkani to English medium. What is interesting is that these arguments
do not fracture the meaningless labels of “Christian community” and “Hindu
community” invoked by Bhembre and others. This is not surprising given that
this group is actively engaged in Hindu reform, a process which neuters
dalit-bahujan assertions, and consolidates disparate caste groups into a single
Hindu community usually under brahmin leadership or direction. Their rhetoric
and activism is never really one of a radical rejection of caste hegemony, but
of managing the anger against their caste group and its leadership of the
political community Goa.

Another
touchstone to use for evaluation would be their response to the demand that the
Roman script be recognised on par with Nagari Konkani. These secular Saraswat will agree that there
is a need for a more “bahujanised” Konkani, but will not budge when it comes to
giving equal rights to the Roman script. Thus, what they are doing is trying to
make Nagari Konkani, the vehicle of Saraswat hegemony in Goa, more palatable to
the bahujans, even while they completely ignore the real issue of Romi Konkani.

It is important
to underline that it is not my argument that these men are performing the
strategy of the brahmin double deliberately. Very often our actions are
determined not by our conscious selves but determined by the milieu in which we
are raised. The response, therefore, is not to necessarily condemn these men.
Our response ought to be to always be aware of the manner in which the social
structure asserts itself, and thus question brahmin saviours, and make these
saviours aware of the pernicious politics that they reproduce.

About Me

Itinerant mendicant captures two aspects of my life perfectly. My educational formation has seen me traverse various terrains, geographical as well as academic. After a Bachelor's in law from the National Law School of India, I worked for a while in the environmental and developmental sector. After a Master's in the Sociology of Law, I obtained a Doctorate in Anthropology in Lisbon for my study of the citizenship experience of Goan Catholics. I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology at the University Institute of Lisbon, but continue to shuttle between Lisbon and Goa.
I see myself as a mendicant not only because so many of my voyages have been funded by scholarships and grants but because I will accept almost any offer for sensorial and intellectual stimulation, and thank the donor for it.
This blog operates as an archive of my writings in the popular press.